A Shiny New Australia
by Mint Pearl Voice
Summary: After surviving an accident that should have killed her, Penny attempts to put her existence back together, figure out how she feels about her best friend, and find the mysterious person who saved her life.
1. Act 1

She was alive when she should have been dead. Of course there were consequences.

"I can't believe you survived that," Katherine, the nurse on duty, chirped as she took Penny's (still abnormally low, despite bucketworths of transfusions, blood pressure. "I mean, a machine part spearing you right through the lungs, blood spurting everywhere… who'd have thunk it?"

Desperate Housewives blared from the TV; Penny followed the nurse with her eyes, a bit too worn out to ask her to turn it off. Earlier that day, they'd mixed up her veggie burger with the burger burger intended for the guy in the room next to her. And Penny, even if she'd only recently woken up from a month-long coma, didn't intend to eat anything that came from a moocow.

So, with one hand on the wall, shuffling through the corridors in her hospital gown, Penny had dragged herself to the cafeteria, where she'd grabbed a veggie burger from the takeout line. She took one bite- and, exhausted, toppled backwards onto the tile floor. So now she had a terrible puncture wound and a mild concussion. Oh, well.

Penny always looked on the bright side, though. Even now, with one of her least favorite shows invading her overly sensitive ears, she could find something to smile about. It was a beautiful day; she knew that because she'd been lucky enough to get a room that faced the sun. Sunlight streamed in through her window, and a breeze made the curtains billow. Little birds chirped outside. What a truly lovely day! She couldn't wait to get out of the hospital and enjoy it properly.

And she was alive. By some freak twist of fate, the piece of metal that went into her chest hadn't hit anything too vital. One inch more of tilt and it would have scraped an artery; one inch less and she'd still be on the ventilator, assuming she could have survived at all. Okay, so apparently her boyfriend had dumped her while she was in a coma, but her co-workers had taken up a collection to pay her rent until she got back, and she still had her wonderful job.

The cuff tightened around her arm, but Penny ignored the pain- she'd gotten used to it.

"So, what's the first thing you're going to do when you get out of here? Go to the movies? There's this great horror movie that came out recently, Saw 27- blood and guts all over the screen!"

Penny shook her head. "That sounds fun, but… I have something important to do."

Like finding the person who'd saved her life. Someone had stopped her from bleeding to death, had kept her lungs working and her heart beating. Someone had sat with her until the police arrived, cradling her, whispering her name. She remembered hearing them, but she couldn't remember the tone of their voice. And although she tried to call up an image, a name, the color of their eyes, anything, nothing concrete really came to mind. Just the touch of a gloved finger against her cheek.

The monitor beeped, and, with a sigh of escaping air, the cuff loosened. Katherine looked at the readout.

"Well, you might get to do it this week," she said. "These numbers are almost normal. You'll be going home soon."

The sunlight streaming through her window seemed even brighter than before.


	2. Act 2

(A.N.: This chapter is from 's POV- hope you like it!)

_On an ordinary Wednesday morning in L.A… or was it?_

Doctor Horrible lurked in the alleyway. Leaning against a brick wall, he watched the bus stop. A bus screeched to a halt, and he smiled an evil smile. Said smile had taken him several days to perfect, but it was coming along quite nicely, especially after…

No. Don't think about it. He couldn't think about it.

He pulled the goggles down over his eyes, darkening the sunny day to a dimmer, grayscale landscape that matched his mood. A bus screeched to a halt in front of the bus stop. As the sheeple who'd waited for it lined up in a neat, orderly line, he tossed the remote-control device in the bus's direction. It flew in a high arc before its magnetic fields kicked in, clamping it onto the top of the bus.

Perfect.

This time, his plan ran no risk of being ruined. Captain Hammer was on the East Coast with his family, recovering from the loss of (no no no don't think about it,) and even if someone tried to stop him, he'd reinforced the controller unit with extra-strength platinum steel, making it nigh-unbreakable, even with the benefit of superstrength.

It would be like that movie about the terrorists and exploding bus, only with less special effects and more real-life eviltastic awesomeness. He'd take control of the bus, then threaten to drive it into a wall- or a kindergarten, but probably a wall- unless the mayor agreed to pay him an enormous sum of money from the city treasury.

(He didn't know what he planned to do with the money, but that was okay. It was getting the money that mattered, scaring the populace. Screams shot into his veins like electricity, making him feel okay, in control, alive.)

And as soon as the last idiot commuter plodded onto the bus, he could start his plan. Doctor Horrible (not Billy, at least not anymore) drummed gloved fingers on a windowsill, watching impatiently as the line dwindled. Come on, come on, hurry up… Just get on the bus already!

The sun peeked out from behind a cloud. A beam of light shone down from the clouds, illuminating bright red hair.

Holy fucking shit.

Quickly, Doctor Horrible took off his goggles, rubbed his eyes, and put them back on. Another idiotic person dragged themselves onto the bus, and everyone else moved forward. But the girl at the line's end remained the same.

Red hair, pale skin. Those freckles on her cheeks, like wildflowers springing up all over a field. She wore a light pink dress with a lavender sweater and lace-up espadrilles. And when the person ahead of her said something, she laughed in an unmistakable way, allowing a grin to burst over her face before covering her mouth with her hand.

It couldn't be her. It was just someone who looked like her. Like the redheaded prostitutes that Moist constantly dragged back to the Horrible Lab, hoping to cheer him up. He always sent them away with a substantial tip (the money meant nothing to him) and a warning to never bother him again if they wanted to live.

"I'm not capable of love," he'd told Moist once, obliterating cornflakes with the back of a Mickey Mouse-decorated plastic spoon.

"Why not? You're capable of appreciating Doritos, right? And Dorito love is a kind of love. I mean, it's not love love, but come on, man, Doritos!"

"I'm just not." After the steely-eyed glare that accompanied his statement, there had been no more prostitutes.

Now there were only a few more people waiting to get on the bus. And it wasn't her. It couldn't be. He'd seen her (no no no don't think.)

Come to think of it, this bus wasn't crowded enough to attract sufficient media attention. The next bus would have more people on it. It wouldn't hurt to go look at the girl, just to satisfy his curiosity. And holy shit on a stick- what if it was her?

Four more people. He yanked off the goggles; the elastic strap snapped the back of his head. The gloves seemed impossible to unfasten- their soft, smooth fabric made grasping the buttons ridiculously difficult.

Three more people- and, fuck, the labcoat. Why wouldn't the stupid labcoat come off? It had seemed like such a good idea at the time, reinforcing the fastenings. But, no, he had to go reinforcing the fricking fastenings, like the sort of idiot person who reinforced fastenings- and now the fastenings were reinforced and they wouldn't cooperate!

Two more people, and his arm got stuck in the sleeve. He had to hop around the alleyway with one arm over his head, yanking at the fabric.

One more person. Billy gave the coat one last desperate tug, unbalancing himself, and hopped sideways before crashing into the wall. Not caring, he tossed the coat aside and ran out. "Penny!" he yelled, waving his arms frantically. Desperate hope flung itself against his chest like a caged bird attempting to escape.

The last person before her ascended the bus's steps.

It had to be her.

The bus's doors shut with a pneumatic hiss. It pulled away from the curb.

Please, if there was a god, or even a Flying Spaghetti Monster, let it be her.

She turned to look at him, and a familiar smile lit her face. "Billy? Oh, hi!"

Yeah.

Holy fucking shit.


	3. Act 3

(A.N.: Yeah, this chapter is pretty long. And, by the way, I wrote all the songs (or at least the lyrics) myself. I'm planning to post them on Youtube eventually. Enjoy! :D)

"Penny, oh my god, Penny-" and then his arms closed around her in a tight embrace.

A bit too tight, actually.

"Stitches," Penny managed to gasp. "Internal bruising- and my ribcage-"

"Right. Sorry." Billy's grip loosened, becoming gentler, as if he was scared of breaking her. After a few deep breaths, she managed to recover enough clarity of thought to hug him back. He smelled like smoke, pine needles, and… fabric softener?

"I missed you too." Trying not to cry, she smiled up at him. (What she didn't say was: "After I woke up from my coma, I had the hospital staff deliver the L.A. Times to my room every day for a month so I could make sure that your name wasn't in the obituaries. Then I googled you, but I couldn't find anything recent. By the way, congrats on winning the fifth-grade science fair!" No, that would just have been creepy and kind of stalkerish. )

Billy rested his forehead on her shoulder, his shoulders shaking. "Oh, wow, Penny…" He made an odd sound, like laughing and crying simultaneously. She recognized that sound from the laundromat, from that one day when he'd driven a spork into his thigh. "Wow," he said again. It took all her self-control not to run her fingertips through his soft, sunlight-colored hair. I must have an incredible amount of self-control, Penny thought. Heck, she could write a book! How Not To Make Your Gay Best Friend Feel Uncomfortable By Flirting With Him: The Definitive Guide.

One little problem, though. Billy was just so adorable. That hair! Did he know how much he resembled a golden retriever puppy? And those eyes, holy Greenpeace. No one else had eyes as blue as that…

Get a hold of yourself, girl! Swallowing hard, Penny extricated herself from his embrace and stepped back. "It's good to see you," she said.

"How are you… you know… still alive? Not dead?"

"Fate, I guess," Penny explained. "One millimeter in any direction and that piece of metal would have hit something important. The doctors said it was a one-in-a-gazillion-chance."

"Well, you must be a really lucky girl."

He was right. Being alive rocked. Everything from the blue sky over the head to the way her toes wiggled in her espadrilles seemed like a gift from some benevolent angel. If she closed her eyes and concentrated, she could hear birds singing, even though there were no birds nearby. That was how incredible life seemed.

She nodded. "Yeah."

Now that more than an inch of space separated them, Penny could get a better look at her friend. His cheeks seemed hollow, and prominent dark shadows resembled sleeplessness-inflicted bruises under his eyes. In a word, he looked horrible. She wanted to wrap him in a Snuggie and feed him vegetarian chicken soup until his hands stopped trembling. Oh, and kiss him approximately ten thousand times, but…

Jeez. The one guy who shared her values for a reason other than 'wanting to get into her underwear,' and he just had to have complicated, hatesexy UST with her ex-boyfriend. Well, she'd survived an accident that, according the rules of logic, should have killed her. So you had to take the bad with the good, y'know?

Instinctively, she took a step towards him. "Are you all right?"

His eyes seemed completely blank."I'm fine."

No. Clearly, he wasn't.

But if she took one more step forward, she could reach up and kiss him…

She was looking at him.

She was looking at him.

Why was she looking at him like that? He was fine, dammit, no matter what his subconscious screamed at him. He'd been fine when he lowered her small, bloodstained body onto the gurney, and he'd continued to be totally fine ever since. Totally, completely, utterly fine.

Seriously, though, why was she looking at him like that? Don't torment me, Billy wanted to yell at her. I'm not worthy of you.

But if he took one more step forward, he could tilt his head downwards and kiss her. Just one more decisive, manly, un-tentative, un-spazflaily step…

Inexplicably, as Penny observed him, the opening notes of a song played in her head. The song went something like this:

"Just one more step

And our lips will meet

Just one more step

And my life will be complete

Just one more step

And the sun will shine much brighter

Heavy backpacks will seem lighter

One more step…"

By sheer coincidence, a similar song played in Doctor Horrible's head. The lyrics of his version were as follows:

"Just one more step

And I'll prove you wrong

Just one more step

I have waited for so long

Just one more step

And you'll see the me inside

Your misconceptions cast aside

Just one more step…"

"Just one more step!" Penny thought, willing herself to move forward. Her feet, however, seemed stuck to the ground.

"Just one more step!" Billy tried to persuade himself. As usual, though, his legs wouldn't move.

"Any way to say it clearer-"

"And today you'll see me clearer-"

"If I just take one step nearer," they thought simultaneously. "One more step…"

Billy stared into Penny's eyes.

Penny stared into Billy's eyes.

Billy, his mouth dry, stared back.

"Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo dooo…"

A tinny, 8-bit version of the Bad Horse theme song blared from Billy's pocket, ruining the moment. "Phone," he said, his mind working frantically. He held up a finger. "My phone."

"'Kay." Penny turned away, tugging at her hair.

Swearing in extinct languages under his breath, Billy ducked back into the alleyway he'd concealed himself in earlier. He fumbled with his phone for a few seconds, finally managing to open it just as the call clicked over to voicemail.

"Hello?"

No answer. Mentally hitting himself for his stupidity, he clicked over to Voicemail and hit the "Play" button. The familiar voices of the Bad Horse chorus blared in his ear:

"We waited in position,

You did not come along.

What happened, Doctor Horrible,

And what went wrong?

You should not keep us waiting,

Cause we won't wait for long…

So do your job

We will enforce

What we require.

Signed, Bad Horse."

With a sigh, he clicked the phone off.

"Anything important?" Penny asked.

"No, just… work stuff. My coworkers… I have these coworkers, and… yeah. You know how coworkers can be sometimes. All coworkery and deadliney and… bleh." He made a vague hand gesture.

She nodded sympathetically. "Yeah."

"So. Umm." Penny was back from the dead and standing right in front of him. In a knee-length sundress and these really cute lace-up sandals that showed the slightly chipped baby-pink polish on her toenails. He wanted to lick all ten of her toes. Bite them. Suck on them. Was that weird?

Actually, from a purely objective standpoint, everything about Penny seemed lickworthy.

Okay, yeah. That was weird.

"I have to do this thing with these people and this other thing," he babbled, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. "So… yeah. Bye!"'

When Billy- no, Doctor Horrible, Billy had died when- no, it didn't happen. It couldn't have happened. She was back. And if she was back, then she had never- no, don't think about it. Don't think about all the blood- but Penny was- she had been, and now-

No. He was fine.

When Doctor Horrible met up with the rest of the League, they were more than moderately ticked off at them. So, stammering as he stalled for time, he made up an excuse about how he'd tested out the remote-control signal on a car parked in the Handicapped section (that one got a few approving nods,) eventually crashing it into a jungle gym (more nods,) but he hadn't been satisfied with the level of control that the device provided, so… yeah.

The excuse went over rather well. After a few minutes of hushed debate, the League agreed to give him a few days off to perfect the mechanisms. He walked back to the Horrible Lab with an actual spring pervading his steps, although it went away when he glared at it. Nevertheless, when he ducked behind a tree and took off his signature red labcoat and dark goggles, the sun didn't bother his eyes as much as he usually did. He even observed himself… humming.

Later, when the nightmares were at their goriest, Billy closed his eyes to block out the intolerable images. Opening them, he found himself standing in a field of wildflowers, the sun shining brightly overhead.

In the distance, a petite figure wearing a sundress danced to an unheard melody, her long, red hair blowing in a gentle breeze.

Billy slept through the night for the first time in months.


	4. Act 4

The next morning, Penny woke up disoriented, not knowing where she was. After a few seconds, she realized she was in her own bed, and a huge smile spread across her face. She loved her apartment. With its mismatched vintage plates, huge windows, and bumper-sticker covered refrigerator, it was the perfect extension of her personality.

She'd spent most of the previous day catching up on a week's worth of chores; restocking her empty fridge, washing all her clothes, picking up dry cleaning and the backlog of mail that waited for her at the post office, and replacing the blackened bananas on the little wooden 'banana tree' with yummy-looking fresh ones.

Now, sunlight streamed in through the window as she changed her bandages. She didn't even need to look at the "How to Care for your Icky, Near-Fatal Wounds" pamphlet to remember the order anymore: antiseptic cream, gauze, actual bandages, Velcro tape. As she squeezed translucent ointment onto her fingertips, a happy song popped into her head, and she couldn't help singing it:

"It's a brand new day

Somehow I survived

Like a bird, I sing

Because I'm still alive!

So cheer up, pessimists

Penny Pond's arrived!

It's a brand new day…"

Penny smoothed down the final piece of tape. Her pet pigeon, a scraggly, one-and-a-half-winged bird she'd found on her windowsill a few months before all this 'death' craziness had started, hopped around near her feet, cooing a counterpoint. Still humming, she pulled on a lavender sundress with a blue sweater and headed to her job.

"Oh my gosh, you guys, this is so sweet!"

A huge banner hung from the ceiling: CONGRATULATIONS PENNY ON BEING NOT DEAD.

"It's the least we could do after all that publicity you gave us, Penny darling," her friend, an 89-year-old woman named Grace said, giving Penny a hug. "Speaking of sweet…" She drew Penny aside and pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket. "Look at this!"

"This" was a slightly crumpled check. A few small patches looked crinkled, the colors bleached from the paper, as if their anonymous benefactor had been crying while she or he wrote it. There was a '1' on the line where you were supposed to put the amount of money that the check was worth. Below the line, their benefactor had written an upwards arrow and, in spindly, angular letters, 'Write in as many zeroes as you want… no, seriously. I mean it.'

Penny gaped. "Wow." Her mind whirred with possibilities. There were so many things she could do with all this money: new shoes and clothes for the children, an operation for Kimiko (an abandoned baby with a cleft lip,) more job training classes, more beds, fix the roof…

Oh, shoot. The roof!

"Did you get that message I left you?" she asked Grace.

Grace wrinkled her nose. "What message?"

"That message about how the roof needs to be fixed ASAP," Penny said desperately. While in the hospital, she'd found out why the city had planned to tear the building down: the roof was unstable and liable to collapse at any moment. Literally, 'any moment.'

"What?"

A terrible wrenching noise filled the air, and someone screamed. Looking up, Penny saw a huge crack spreading across the ceiling...


	5. Act 5

Around midnight- well, next midnight, but it was still a midnight- the nightmare reared its familiar head. Not that it had a head. Because it was, you know, a nightmare. All incorporeal and stuff. If it did, though, it would have actually had several heads; one that looked like a pug dog with bleeding eyes, foaming at the mouth (pugs scared him,) one that looked like Captain Hammer, albeit with a horror-clown's maniacal grin, and one that just looked like Penny, her eyes open but unseeing. This time, the dream skipped straight to the end.

Doctor Horrible stood triumphant amidst the ruined ceremony, presiding over knocked-over folding chairs and scared morons like a conquering emperor.

"Mommy!" Captain Hammer wailed, running from the room. "Someone maternal! Aagh!" He threw people out of his way before barging through the double doors.

Okay. Now what? Captain- no, wait, Doctor Horrible thought, frowning. Clearly, he hadn't thought this through properly. The death ray had proved much more delicate than he'd expected. However, without his idiotic confidence, Captain Hammer would be much easier to kill next time. Maybe his near-success would be enough to keep Bad Horse happy. Now to change back into Billy, find Penny, and reassure her that everything would be just fine-

That everything would be-

That-

No. Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

Oh, shit.

Penny leaned against the wall like a haphazardly dropped rag doll, her brown eyes glassy. A large shard of the ruined gun protruded from her chest, surrounded by a rapidly growing expanse of blood. Lots of blood- and she was on the petite side, so she probably wouldn't have had much blood to begin with- but blood loss didn't matter, the shard had gone right through her ribcage, for god's sake...

He rushed over and dropped to his knees beside her, then felt at her wrist, searching for a pulse, only it kept slipping away beneath his fingers, and were you supposed to use the vein or the artery? But it didn't matter- she was bleeding to death in front of him, and it was completely his fault.

"It's okay, it'll be okay," he babbled, mostly to reassure her, but partly to reassure himself. His heart felt like it was beating fast enough for both of them. "Penny, hold on…"

Penny struggled to focus on him. "Billy? Is that you?"

No. No, no, no, no, no. She couldn't die.

"'S okay," she murmured, only half seeming to hear what he'd said. "Captain Hammer will save us."

The ambulance would take at least five minutes to arrive. Without help, Penny would bleed to death long before then.

Normally, in the dream, she died at that very moment, her eyes open and unseeing. It's a dream, he told himself sternly. Remember what really happened? I can make it happen again. Everything happens, damnit!

The scene jumped back a few seconds.

"S' okay... Captain Hammer will save us." As if thinking that she'd done all she could to reassure him, Penny finally allowed the pain from her wound to affect her. With a soft whimper, she closed her eyes, her shoulders trembling.

No time for panicking, even though he really wanted to panic. He had to act now if he wanted to save her. Clamping down on his feelings, Billy ran towards the powered-out freeze ray; examining its circuits, he sang quietly to himself as a way to stay calm.

"A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do…"

It was a simple mechanical error, nothing that needed tools to repair. In layman's terms, the wire that connected the power source to the temporal concentrator had gotten loose. He just needed to jiggle it back into place.

Billy pulled a Swiss Army knife from his lab coat's pocket and set to work. Don't look at Penny bleeding to death in the corner, he told himself. This is how you can help her. Concentrate on the task.

Using the melody to keep his mind focused, he continued to sing.

"I'll try anything if it means saving you."

By turning the power to maximum and narrowing the blast focus to its smallest radius, he could freeze just the wound, isolating it from the rest of her body, sort of like a temporal tourniquet. However, the power it took to do so would burn the Wonderflonium out completely, rendering it useless. He might never have a chance to use the freeze ray again… but he didn't care.

"My love for you leaves me unwilling to accept your death…"

If Penny lived, he'd fix his priorities. No more putting supervillain work above the people he cared about. Maybe he'd even go out and, y'know, find some more people to care about.

"So I'll stop time-"

The wire clicked back into place. A whirring sound split the air as the Wonderflonium gathered its final charge.

"-and hold off your last breath!"

Blue light arced across the room, slamming into Penny's body. Was it even safe to hit an ordinary person with so much Wonderflonium freeze-ray energy? Well, if it wasn't, he'd think about that later. Once again, he rushed to her side.

She was still breathing, even though he'd freeze-rayed her heart. When he leaned over her, she blinked at him, seemingly on the verge of tears. "Who- I can't-"

"Shh, I know," he whispered, touching her cheek. Normally, the idea of even being within five inches of her would have sent him into a flailpanicky tailspin, but he managed to rationalize it by telling himself that he couldn't just leave her to wait for the ambulance by himself… well, maybe it was a stupid excuse, but he didn't feel comfortable abandoning her. Not when she could still die at any moment.

Her eyes crossed a little, and she giggled quietly.

Shit. Was she going into shock? He'd only taken pre-med before deciding to get his PhD in Horribleness as opposed to neurobiology, but he still knew that shock was a Very Bad Thing. What were you supposed to do to treat shock? Keep the person warm, right?

"You're going to be all right," he whispered, sitting down next to her.

She shivered. "My… thingy hurts. Thing that you breathe with."

Okay, yeah. Not good. Really, really not good. A person in shock could deteriorate quickly, after all. You had to keep their body temperature from plummeting. Oh, and elevate their feet, although he wasn't sure why. Carefully, he scooched closer to her, picking up her feet and placing them on top of his ankles. He took off his coat and draped it over her, but she was still shivering. Okay. Clearly, drastic measures were necessary here. Hardly daring to breathe, Billy put an arm around her.

Her head flopped onto his shoulder. "You're all nice and warm," she murmured. Cuddling into him, she smiled sleepily.

Despite the precariousness of her situation, Billy couldn't help smiling shakily back.

They were still like that- Penny half-asleep in his arms as he regarded her protectively - when the ambulance arrived.

Billy hadn't realized how desperate his body had been for sleep. In fact, he slept for a full twenty-four hours, slumped over his desk and snoring quietly. Only Moist dropping a newspaper on his head awakened him. "Paper, boss. Thought you might want to see this. See you later- I'm giving a speech at the Henchmen's Union Annual Conference of Evilness downtown, but I'll catch up with you after that! And then we can… you know… do evil stuff!" With a trying-to-look cool nod, he left.

Blinking open bleary eyes, Billy pulled the paper off his head and looked at it.

Doctor Horrible stared at the front page in disbelief.

ROOF COLLAPSES AT HOMELESS SHELTER, it read. TWO KILLED.

And on the front page, a picture of Penny. She lay amidst the rubble, her eyes half-closed, a burst of red spreading across her chest. The article's first sentence started: Captain Hammer's ex-girlfriend…

Doctor Horrible threw the paper across the room. He felt as if a flying shard of metal had impaired his chest. Before falling asleep, he'd planned on getting up his courage to call Penny. Telling her that he loved her. Asking her out for fro-yo and texting. Still, if it was worth doing, it was worth putting off until he could contemplate the possibility without feeling like he was going to faint from nervousness. Or so he'd thought, at least.

And now Penny was dead. Penny, the kindest, determined-est, most selfless girl in the universe, was dead.

Again.

And he'd never even had the chance to tell her that he loved her. No, he'd had the chance. He'd just fucked it up.

He always fucked things up.

Doctor Horrible attempted to summon his familiar lack of emotions. Stay calm, stay logical. Maybe Penny hadn't died, and they'd just put her picture on the cover to sell more subscriptions. Newspapers did things like that all the time.

He reached for the remote and turned on the TV. The familiar faces of two newscasters- a man with gray hair and a slender, blonde woman- appeared onscreen.

"After the roof of the new Caring Hands Homeless Shelter fell down earlier today, a never-before-seen superhero, Lucky Penny, saved the day," the man said, looking into the camera.

The woman nodded. "That's what superheroes always do!" An image of Lucky Penny, looking slightly stunned as camera flashes went off in her face, replaced them. "We have exclusive footage of-"

Lunging forward, Doctor Horrible froze the frame. He dropped the remote and stalked towards the television, crouching in front of it to caress the screen with a still-gloved hand. Although Lucky Penny was a bit taller and significantly curvier, her hair shining an abnormally bright, comic-book red, the two women had similar eyes. It hurt worse than a Prius flung at his head.

He'd killed Penny. If he'd asked her to skip work, she might not have gone to work, and then she might not have gotten killed. And, yes, his logic made perfect sense. Why wouldn't it?

He fucked everything up.

Turning away from the television, Doctor Horrible noticed a paper clip sitting on his desk. He picked it up and unfolded the wire, pulling the end upwards like an unfolded switchblade. The paper clip seemed to gleam when he held it up to the florescent lights.

He yanked off his left glove and, pressing down as hard as he could, drew the paper clip across his forearm, jaw clenched against a stab of pain that he only half-felt.

Blood welled up from the straight, vertical line of the cut. Experimentally, he scraped the paper clip's edge across his skin again, making another, identical line next to it, then a horizontal line to connect the two.

Interesting. It barely hurt at all, actually.

It would have been difficult to draw a circle, so he made a square, jabbing the sharp end of the paper clip into the open cut after he'd finished, then pulling back the wound's edges just to see if he felt anything.

He didn't, of course. He felt fine.

Sitting down, Doctor Horrible rested his forearm on the desk to keep it steady. Two jagged Rs, then a linear I. B was blocky and squarish, like an old-fashioned robot, the sort with pincers for clumsy, unwieldy hands. L was easy, and E looked like it had teeth.

HORRIBLE bled.

He considered etching the words into his other arm, or maybe further up on his left arm, or possibly on his leg.

Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-dooo….

Phone. What were you supposed to do with phones?

He stared at the phone for a few seconds, letting the tune play on.

Oh, right. You talked to them.

Doctor Horrible answered the phone. "Hello?"

Once again, the sound of the Bad Horse Chorus filled his ears.

"Bad Horse-"

"Is mad!"

"And that's-"

"Too bad!"

Together, the three cowboys sang:

"We saw it in the papers

You failed to do your job

You've never killed a single person

What a slob!

We thought that you were evil

But now we just feel robbed

So if you want to stay the course…"

There was a scrabbling sound, and Bad Horse snorted into the phone, his rarely-heard voice low and menacing: "Kill Lucky Penny."

The chorus chimed back in, ending the song. "Signed, Bad Horse!"

Click. Doctor Horrible stared at the phone, his face emotionless. Then a slow smirk conquered his expression, and he chuckled. It was a malevolent chuckle of madness. He'd failed to (can't think not now she's gone,) and now they were giving him a chance to make up for it by killing the superhero who taunted him by resembling her.

Still chuckling, he rolled his sleeve over the sluggishly-bleeding scratches on his arm and put on his gloves. In one stroke (well, one ray-gun blast was more like it,) he'd make up for not only his failure to kill Captain Hammer, but also his failure to-

His failure to-

Doctor Horrible pulled his goggles down over his eyes and turned on the webcam.


	6. Act 6

No, Penny thought. She dropped to the floor, squeezing her eyes shut-

Abruptly, light flashed through her, swirling around her fingertips before exploding outward. She could see it even through her closed eyelids, causing her to open them the tiniest fraction.

Rubble seemed to fall all around her. There was a terrible crashing sound- but nothing even touched her.

Finally, when the sounds of structural collapse had died away, Penny stood up.

Or, well, tried to stand up. Instead, she made it a few inches before bonking her head on the underside of a table and having to sit back down.

"What happened?" Grace asked, her eyes wide. "What… why are you…"

"The table saved us," Penny mumbled dazedly. Around them, people pointed and whispered amongst themselves. They looked as shaken by the incident as she felt. She knew what had happened, though. All the tables at the shelter had wheels so that the staff could rearrange them, but there was one table that everyone hated. For some reason, it seemed incapable of staying in one place for more than thirty minutes at a time. No matter what people propped against its legs to get it to stay put, it would always move during the day, even if it was only by a few inches, which was what usually happened. And now the table had rolled over to them at the exact instant when they needed protection. Wow, Penny thought. Was that implausible or what?

At that very moment, one of the News Channel vans that habitually cruised the town, looking for things to report on, screeched to a halt on the opposite side of the street.

"Hey, the roof fell in!" that one blond reporter said. Stepping out of the van, she tottered a little in her high heels, but quickly recovered her equilibrium. "Let's go get the scoop!"

Okay. They would want to interview her, and she could use the opportunity to get people to donate to the shelter. Still trembling a little, Penny crawled out from under the table-

Instantly, she found herself at the center of what felt like a media tornado. Camera flashes went off in her face, and reporters competed to shove microphones under her nose.

"What happened?"

"Why are you still alive?"

"What were you thinking when the roof fell down on your head?"

Penny swallowed. She was sure if she spoke, she'd stammer and make a fool of herself. Then it would spread across Youtube and make the shelter look bad. She could see the headlines now: Captain Hammer's Ex-Girlfriend Just as Stupid as He Is!

If she spoke.

But what if she sang?

Imagining a jaunty piano accompaniment, Penny launched into the following:

"When the roof fell down, I shouted "Duck!"

Cause I thought that I would die;

But it didn't hit the ground- such amazing luck- and I'm really not sure why…"

As she sang, her confidence grew. Suddenly, the piano accompaniment became even jauntier.

"But life has worked out great for me

Fate just seems to favor me

A crazy random happenstance

A quirk of chance, a mystery

Life can be amazing and

We may never understand

Why the world works out the way it does…

Cause sometimes, things just happen

Just because."

The song came to an end, eliciting a smattering of applause from the assembled reporters (those who had their hands free, anyway.)

"Hey, over here!" one reporter shouted, waving his notepad. Penny recognized him as the leading reporter from L.A.'s most well-known TV channel. Holy wow with marshmallow sauce.

She turned towards him. "Yes?"

"I don't think I've ever seen you before. Are you new to L.A.? What's your superhero name?"

Superhero… name? Penny looked down at herself.

Then she gasped.

Her lavender dress had transformed, becoming about two inches shorter and much more glittery. The skirt also looked fuller and poofier, causing it to resemble a party dress, and her turquoise sweater had transformed into a bolero-like shrug. Additionally, even though her espadrilles looked the same, she could actually run in them. Wow.

Finally, in the exact spot where she'd been wounded two months and three days ago, a red starburst spread across the front of her dress. Her costume's insignia.

Only superheroes- and supervillains- could transform their clothes like that. But Penny didn't have any powers- or did she?

Apparently, it seemed that she did.

Billy's words floated unbidden into her mind: "Well, you must be a really lucky girl."

She was lucky.

Really lucky. So…

"Umm…" Then, in a flash of inspiration, a name appeared. "Lucky Penny," she said, smiling at a camera. "Like when you see a coin on the sidewalk, and you pick it up, and even if it's covered in germs, you still feel really fortunate, because, hey, free cash! Who cares if you get mono or hepatitis? You've found one solitary, awesomesauce cent, so it's all totally cool!" I'm rambling! she wanted to say. I'm an idiot! Seriously, does being a superhero make you incoherent, or is that just shock? Nevertheless, she posed, grinning her brightest grin for the TV studios. It was for the shelter, after all, and what was a little public humiliation compared to getting L.A.'s less fortunate off the streets and into promising new lives?

"I can see the headline now," one reporter said, gesturing to a co-worker. "Lucky Penny Saves Everyone; Homeless Shelters Are Cool."

And even though being on T.V. made her feel slightly uncomfortable, Penny's grin grew.

(A.N.: The song in this episode is original, by the way, so that's why the words don't fit with any of the songs from the webseries. :P)


	7. Act 7

Lucky Penny- well, just Penny, now that she'd learned how to shift out of her superhero form when necessary- lay curled up on her bed, hugging a pillow to her chest.

Yesterday had been the craziest day of her life, and that was really saying something. After finishing what seemed like an endless barrage of interviews, Princess Prettyful (Princess Prettyful! Penny had felt like fangirl flailing such the muchness.) had swooped down from the sky in a burst of pink glitter. "Hello, new superheroine!" She struck a seductive pose, and the cameras went wild. "We'd like to invite you to consider joining our totally supercool Heroic League of Heroes. Teehee!"

Penny's tongue felt like it had swollen to ten times its usual size. As a child, she'd completely idolized Princess Prettyful, a former-beauty-pageant-contestant-turned-superheroine. For weeks, she'd refused to wear anything that wasn't pink.

"Okay," she stammered. "Cool."

Princess Prettyful's hand closed around hers. The next thing Penny knew, she stood in the Heroic League's fabled, futuristic headquarters.

"You have red hair," Richard Stans said, eyeing her suspiciously. He wore an American flag wrapped around his muscular torso like a toga. "You're not a communist, are you?"

Richard's sidekick, Inda Visible, a petite, ballerina-thin girl in a flag-print sports bra and miniskirt, practically jumped up and down next to him. She reminded Penny of a Chihuahua. "Yeah! Communists are bad! USA! USA!"

"I always give communists a smackdown," said Sergeant Smackdown, joining the conversation. An ex-army man who still wore his uniform, he'd volunteered to test an experimental weapon; when it exploded, he'd ended up with one of the most impressive sets of biceps in the history of mankind. Additionally, his fists could punch through anything, even walls.

Penny giggled nervously, twirling her bright red hair. When she was four, before she'd discovered global warming, the destructive effects of factory farming, and the joys of helping injured animals, she'd had a poster of Sergeant Smackdown on her bedroom wall. Even now, being in the same room with so many famous superheroes made her feel slightly lightheaded.

Sergeant Smackdown turned to Princess Prettyful. "Is she your new sidekick? I thought you were going to pick someone with, you know, hair that wasn't quite so… carroty."

What? She liked her hair, damn it.

"Not to mention politically subversive," Richard Stans added, sotto voce.

Just then, Consumereesta, wearing a furry, leopard-print jumpsuit and nine-inch high heels, sashayed through the open double doors that lead to the rest of the Heroic League's luxurious base. When she caught sight of Penny, her mouth dropped open. "Ehmygawd. What is this?" Somehow, she managed to run towards them. "Darling," she said critically, draping a slender arm over Penny's shoulders, "is that… vintage?"

"Yeah," Penny said, trying not to shrink away. She'd always admired Consumereesta's confidence and extravagant style; up close, however, her musky floral perfume smelled unbearably stifling. "So?"

Consumereesta recoiled. She looked horrified. "So, darling, you need to shop more! Wouldn't you like to hit the mall and buy a new dress? Some cute shoes?" A hypnotic tone pervaded her voice.

Penny felt her tongue moving to form the word Yes. Looking at Consumereesta, she opened her mouth to reply-

And closed it.

"Wait," Penny said slowly. Her thoughts whirred like a gaming laptop's high-powered fan. "Is that… real fur?"

"Of course it is, darling! That's the point." And, seeming to completely ignore Penny's expression, she turned to Princess Prettyful. "Ehmygawd, darling, you'll never believe what my manicurist said earlier…"

Penny's hands curled into fists. "I hate fur," she said, low anger boiling in her voice. No one seemed to hear her.

Against her better judgment, Penny agreed to hang out with the Heroic League of Heroes for the remainder of the day. She wanted to be back at the homeless shelter, helping clean up the debris, comforting the children. But joining the League would give her the opportunity to help so many more people. To help everyone. Maybe she could even get the rest of the League to understand her views. Because the Heroic League of Heroes was always doing totally awesome things. Stopping supervillains, saving the world…

Richard Stans armwrestled Sergeant Smackdown. Princess Prettyful and Consumereesta gossiped about what losers several non-League superheroines were, and Inda Visible painted her toenails. Penny, whose toenails were already painted, sat awkwardly in a nearby armchair. Just a few more minutes, she kept telling herself. Just a few more minutes of boasting and trashtalking and getting increasingly drunk, and then the League would go off and do something incredible.

Right?

A few minutes passed. A few more minutes followed them.

Nothing changed.

Finally, Penny stood up. "Umm, hello?"

No one heard her.

"Hello?"

The album that had blared from Princess Prettyful's Ipod ended, and her voice echoed in the silence.

Princess Prettyful looked up. "Yeah?"

"Are you planning on helping anyone today?" It came out a little sharper than she'd intended, but she didn't mind. "There's lots of people who could use it. The homeless shelter's roof needs fixing, families have lost their pets, bullied teenagers are contemplating suicide, and there are kids in the hospital's cancer ward who could definitely use some cheering up!" Her voice rose until she was practically shouting. Penny felt as if she'd turned into a dragon, verbal flames of opinionated-ness issuing from her mouth. "And you're just sitting here, gossiping about people who probably haven't done anything to deserve it, wearing the fur of endangered species, and- and drinking cocktails!" Her voice rose until, by the last words, she was practically shouting, her face almost as red as her hair.

Princess Prettyful stared at her, a hint of a bemused smile playing around her perfect lips. "So?"

With that, everyone turned back to their former pursuits. It was like she'd never even said anything.

Lies. All lies. The Heroic League of Heroes wasn't heroic. Its members were self-serving nincompoops who didn't care about helping others, just about making themselves look good.

If Penny wanted to change the world, she couldn't count on the people she'd once admired to help her.

She would have to do it herself.

Teary-eyed, yet determined, Penny turned around and walked towards the door. Pausing on the top step of the spiral staircase, she considered giving the League a second chance. Maybe, if she just said the right thing, she could convince them to see things her way. But-

No, Penny, she told herself. Resting her hand on the banister, she took one step, then another. She'd spent too many years letting other people take advantage of her to invalidate her first-ever time standing up for herself now.

So, following her own advice, Penny kept her head high and didn't look back.


	8. Act 8

By the next day, Penny's confidence had ebbed a bit. Why couldn't she have tried to be more persuasive? Maybe if she made them realize that helping other people could be fun… She knew she'd done the right thing, but remembering it felt difficult.

How was she going to change the world by herself?

Just then, however, the phone rang, taking her mind off her dejected thoughts.

She picked it up. "Penny Pond speaking- hello?"

Princess Prettyful's voice trilled through the speakers, nearly blowing her eardrums out. Surprised, she tumbled off the bed. The phone, still audible, blared on:

"A message from the heroes

We liked you quite a bit

But first you need to prove that you

Can take a hit!

We call him Doctor Horr'ble

He's such a piece of shit…

Obliteration we must see

For you to join us.

-Princess P."

Doctor Horrible… A fragment of a melody floated spontaneously into her head.

"It's gonna be bloody- head up, Billy buddy- there's no time for mercy… here goes no mercy…"

Oh, crud, Penny thought. Kill someone? What if it was someone who didn't deserve it? Still, it was worth finding out more about this Doctor Horrible person. She went to her computer, turned it on, and surfed over to Youtube. When she searched his name, the first video that popped up on the results list was called "Doctor Horrible Kills Hero's Girlfriend!" Recognizing the dimly-lit room in the thumbnail, she clicked on the video.

And paused it five seconds in.

All of L.A. knew the labcoated, ray-gun brandishing figure who'd stalked up the auditorium's center aisle as Captain Horrible.

She'd called him Billy.

Biting her lip, Penny unpaused the video.

"It's gonna be bloody- head up, Billy buddy- there's no time for mercy-"

Billy. He'd called himself Billy.

"Here goes no mercy-"

Penny shut the video off.

All of L.A. knew the labcoated, ray-gun brandishing figure who'd stalked up the auditorium's center aisle as Captain Horrible.

She'd called him Billy.

To join the League, would she have to kill one of her closest friends? Okay, yeah. That kind of seriously sucked.

Quickly, Penny replayed the message. She paused it at the last line, then rewound it a few seconds, slowing down to hear the words more clearly:

"Obliteration we must see for you to join us."

Not death, just obliteration. If she could somehow get Billy to relinquish his supervillain identity…

A notification popped up on the side of her screen. "You have one new video message. Video message, one."

She clicked on it- and almost gasped.

Doctor Horrible filled the screen. With his goggles pulled over his eyes, he looked inhuman.

"Lucky Penny…or maybe you're not so lucky after all."

Okay, woah. Penny hit pause again, her toes automatically curling inside her bunny slippers. Yes, his voice sounded menacing, but it was a sexy menacing. She wanted him to threaten to tie her up and ravish her, or even to read the telephone book into a microphone.

Bad fangirl. No bunk. Video. Concentrate. Watch. Save the world first.

"I want to confront you. You- you stole her face. I don't know how you did it- it's not like there's an article on Wikipedia titled 'How to Resemble Someone that No One Should Even Dare to Attempt to Resemble-' but you did." He adjusted his goggles a little, and she watched his hands shake. Oh, Billy…

"She's dead. I didn't kill her, but she's dead- you're not- it should be the other way around, but it's not-"

Wait. He thought she was dead? Why the…

Penny clicked to a news website. An enormous picture of her face topped the headline, "Two Dead at Homeless Shelter-" which was ridiculous. Half of her brain whirred frantically, while the other half of it just stared, spluttering in shock. No one had died! The mainstream media just made facts up to sell papers these days, not caring if they, oh, ruined a few lives in the process or anything inconsequential like that. Grace had fainted, and Katherine, who was twelve, had had an epileptic seizure. Other than that, however, no one had even died a little bit. Chewing on her bottom lip, she read the rest of the article, her eyes slowly widening. "Lucky Penny, a new superhero, showed up to save everyone with her luck-related powers?"

She stared at the screen, extremely unimpressed. "An unnamed worker at the Care Fling Cans Homeless Shelter was noted to be missing; we presume she died beneath the rubble. It's more dramatic that way. In next week's issue, an interview with her grieving relatives… whoever they are!"

Hopefully, her family back in New York wouldn't connect the structural collapse with their daughter. They knew she'd been placed in the hospital due to a 'freak accident,' but she hadn't told them anything else.

Her pigeon hopped onto the sofa and pecked at a pillow as if it had personally insulted him. You and me both, Penny thought. Clicking back to the tab with the video, she reflected that perhaps her silence was for her family's own good. She pressed Play, resuming Doctor Horrible- no, Billy's- slightly rambling speech.

"-and she's not…" He took a deep breath, seeming to collect himself, then focused back on the camera. "Meet me in the laundromat on Third Street, or something goes boom. Homeless shelter, park… maybe I'll explode all the things." His voice dropped to a low, menacing whisper on the last words.

Then the screen went black.

Okay, okay, crap. Penny closed her eyes and concentrated- well, tried to concentrate. The botched attempt left her in just her bra and matching panties, her hands shaking like she'd just knocked back twelve extra-large espressos. Not that surprising, considering how she felt. Fiddling anxiously with her hair, she paced around the room, thinking. Once, she'd thought she knew Billy. He was her shy, idealistic laundromat buddy. He stared at her boyfriend, gave her his extra frozen yogurt, and admired Ghandi.

Oh, and he was also the supervillain who'd tried to kill said boyfriend, and who'd nearly killed her. Could someone who seemed so good on the outside really be so evil on the inside?

His voice drifted into her thoughts: "But sometimes there's a third layer, and that layer is just the same as the first. Like pie." They'd been talking about Captain Hammer, but… maybe Billy had been talking about himself as well.

Penny had always thought that everyone, no matter how evil, had good inside of them.

Of course, she'd lost a lot of illusions since then, but…

Maybe, just maybe, if she believed in Billy, she would be able to bring him back.

With that, she locked on to the sensation of blood-temperature warmth spreading across her chest. A sharp burst of light exploded behind her eyelids, and the glitter of superpowers kicking in danced over her skin. When what she'd come to think of as her 'special effects' faded away, she was in her full superhero outfit, ready to help the helpless, care for the uncared-for, and… all that good stuff.

Okay, so maybe her catchphrase needed work, but…

Lucky Penny strode from the apartment, psyching herself up to confront her perpetually-unrequited crush, who was actually the supervillain who had tried to kill her before, if her patchy memories held any accuracy, possibly saving her life, not to be confused with the other superpowered guy who'd saved her life, but who was actually kind of evil, or at least self-centered, even though both Leagues viewed him as officially good, despite the fact that he constantly clobbered her laundromat crush, who was- hopefully- good despite his evilness, which didn't explain the fact that the Heroic League of Heroes wanted her to kill him, or at least obliterate him…

God, she wondered, sashaying through the circle of brightness cast by a streetlight. How had her life gotten so weird?


	9. Act 9

Shadowed moonlight filtered through the forsaken building's windows.

Doctor Horrible waited in the empty laundromat, leaning on a washing machine. He drummed his fingers on its surface, making a hollow pattering sound. In his other hand, he held the refurbished death ray, which gleamed menacingly.

One shot.

One shot, and all his problems would be over with. He'd be in the ELE, with no feelings or memories to trouble him. He could scrub out the one bright spot of hope that had briefly troubled him, and get on with a truly important task- taking over the world.

If only he'd spent that first paycheck on a washing machine instead of a webcam…

Might as well check the death ray one last time. He touched its glossy surface with a gloved hand, feeling the hum of power from inside it. Pain set to maximum, time between impact and death set to five seconds and twenty-three milliseconds, time between initiation of charge and firing of death pulse set to fourty-three seconds (the 'instant death' mode was still in beta.)

On a whim, he opened a washing machine's door and swung it shut. It made the same sound as it always had.

That was why he had to kill her. To put Penny's ghost to rest, to chase the images of her from his mind.

Then, and only then, could he finally get on with his life.

Then, and only then, would potato chips taste awesome again.

Penny paused outside the doorway. If she leaned close to the window so that her shadow blotted out her reflection, she could just glimpse a figure, like a smear of red, lurking near the back of the room. I can do this, she told herself, reaching for the door. To her surprise, it opened easily, as if someone had already unlocked it. She stepped inside-

And the machines came alive.

A huge claw shot out from a nearby drier. It clamped around her ankle and whipped her into the air, dropping her behind a row of washing machines at the back of the room. She landed unceremoniously on her butt, and the claw retracted with a whirring sound.

From the street, no one could see them.

Penny thought-reached inside her chest for the warm glow of her powers, hoping to slow down Dr. Horrible until she could convince him that, yes, she was Penny, and Penny was still alive. She felt the glittery, hot-chocolate-like swirl within her mental grasp-

Click.

Dr. Horrible stood above her, death ray pointed at her head. The front of it glowed red, like the embers at the heart of a forest fire. Although he wore the goggles on top of his head, his eyes looked so emotionless and blank that it didn't matter. Despite the circumstances, she felt sorry for him.

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't shoot you." He swayed forward, as if having trouble keeping his balance, but steadied himself by resting a hand on a drier.

Oh, yeah, and I'm going to die. That's probably not very good…

Penny's mind felt like it was moving at a trillion times its normal speed. She could visualize the circumstances: a muffled explosion, a pulse of energy fired at her, her body flying backwards, and… bam, no more Penny. It had been so stupid of her to come without backup. What if the Billy she knew was gone forever? What if the cold, cruel killer before her was all that remained?

No. She had to believe in herself. Okay, fine, maybe she was the quiet, nerdy type, at least occasionally… but when it came to protecting the people she loved, she could be as strong as anything.

She looked up into blue eyes, the same shade as always, yet barely recognizable. "Because I'm Penny Pond."

Her statement knocked the breath out of him. No, she wasn't Penny. She couldn't be. Penny had believed in the Heroic League of Heroes, but she would never have accepted an offer to join them, no more than she would have accepted a slice of pepperoni pizza. Penny was much more than the girl who'd mesmerized him that first time at the laundromat, bright red hair and a smile as entrancing as calculus. She was relentless idealism, an unfailing belief in the goodness of humanity, smart enough and kind enough to find the right words for any situation, even while he struggled with simple things like 'hello.'

And now Penny was- no, he had to forget her, forget he'd even known that she existed-

He stepped back, unconsciously cradling his wounded arm against his chest. From the way his head throbbed and his vision swirled every time he tried to use the limb, he'd guessed that the cuts were probably infected, seriously so.

Did it matter?

Meh. Not really. So… shoot all the impostors! "You're not her," he said quietly, a low edge of hatred in his tone. "No one could- she- and I couldn't-"

Okay, yeah, I seem a bit unbalanced. Cold and calculating. No emotions could slip through. He took a deep breath, calming himself, trying to relish the hint of fear in Lucky Penny's expression. Part of him hated himself for not enjoying this; the rest of him hated himself for trying to. It was a lovely combination… not.

And her big brown eyes, and those freckles- they even had similar freckles- freckles on pale skin spattered with blood-

He clicked the trigger from the 'safety' position into the 'unsafety' position. Pain spiked up his arm, but he didn't care. "This takes forty-five seconds to charge. I believe the commonly used phrase for situations such as this is 'any last words?'"


	10. Act 10

It seemed like there was nothing she could say that could be persuasive enough.

Nothing she could say…

But what if she sang?

Looking up at her friend, Penny took a deep breath and let the melody flow forth.

"If there's one thing that I know

It's that there's good inside you."

She paused, glancing up at Doctor Horrible. Anguish spread through his expression. It seemed as if he wanted to believe her- almost believed her- but was afraid to. Well, if she could stand up to the HLH, she could persevere with this. Turn 'almost' into 'mostly' and ignore her fear.

"I know Billy still remains

And that you'll choose the right thing to do…"

Beep. Beep. The glow at the end of the death ray pulsed steadily, its brightness increasing. Penny contemplated closing her eyes-

Billy dropped the death ray, and it clattered to the floor. They both ducked as a bolt of red energy zipped over their heads, blasting off the reflective surface of the washing machine before blasting a hole in the wall.

He curled up into a ball, his shoulders trembling with badly muffled sobs. He couldn't kill Penny, not again- he'd kill himself first- and the ELE would be seriously pissed…

Ohnonononono. Was he actually crying? Penny scooched towards him on her hands and knees, not trusting her legs to work if she stood up. "Hey, it's okay," she murmured, touching his cheek.

"Don't," he said, although without shying away from her. "Love you, Penn, but you need to stay away from me. I break things. I'm as bad for you as- skateboarding without a helmet-"

Finding no other way to express himself, he broke into song.

It was more than just her usual instincts to help people. She could feel the pain in his voice echoing all the way down to her fingertips, and it was kind of metaphorically killing her. She took one of his gloved hands, uncurling it from a fist to weave her fingers through his.

The feel of soft leather against her skin triggered a cascade of memories. That made sense, she thought, trying to sort out the images of concerned blue eyes. Her powers could deflect a fatal blow, but they couldn't stop her from bleeding to death from a nonfatal one.

He'd saved her life.

Softly, she joined in:

Billy looked up at her, an expression of haunted loss still lingering in his impossibly blue eyes. "Did you really-"

Leaning closer, she pressed a soft, tentative kiss to his jawline, eyelashes fluttering against his skin.

"Yeah."

"Penny," he said, half-laughter, half-sob. He squeezed her hand, as if needing to reassure himself that he was actually holding it. Then he shook his head. "I… you're incredible. I just… I can't believe this is happening."

"Like I said, everything happens."

This time, he returned her kiss.

They spent the night in the coin wash. Penny told him about how she'd stood up to the HLH; with her head resting on his chest, she could feel, as well as hear, his laugh. They compared their terrible love lives (she won, albeit only barely, with a pitch-perfect imitation of Captain Hammer's ham-fisted attempts to lure her into his bed.) Leaning against the same washing machine, their fingers entwined, they spun out daydreams: what if we had a giant robot? What if we could feed everyone in L.A.

Penny wrinkled her nose. "With what?"

He held up a finger in an I-am-making-a-very-good-point gesture. "With plankton."

Cuddling into his arms, she looked at him skeptically. "And would people know that they were eating plankton?"

"Why not? It's logical and economical. I ate plankton a lot when I was getting my PhD in Horribleness at U of G." He frowned. "Although when I tried to convince the people on my hall to join in… ever gotten punched through a door? Not fun. It introduced me to the wonderful world of getting punched through doors."

"I tried to introduce the girls in my dorm to soy crumbles. I didn't get punched through doors, but I was the only person not invited to the class's spring party. Which was on a yacht. On the bright side, I did find this lovely coffeehouse a few streets away from the school. They had these vanilla bean lattes with a foam topping that was three inches high, at least…" Suddenly she straightened up, her mouth quirked in a grin. "Oooh. Um-um-um-um-ummm. What if we don't tell people it's plankton? We could give it a catchy name, like 'Yum Chow' or something like that…"

It was as if a light had flicked on behind his intensely blue eyes. "Penny," he said slowly, "you are a genius."

They assigned the washing machines names and personalities.

("That one ate one of my socks once."

He furrowed his brow in mock analysis. "Left sock or right sock?"

"Right, I think."

"Hmm. I say we call him Josh Josherson, Stealer of Right Socks, Upholder of All that Has Left the Path of Rightness." He paused, then added, "Josh for short."

"Works for me. Oh! Maybe he's the illegitimate son of the dryer that always makes those weird noises." "Absolutely.")

Somewhere around three-ish- although the only estimate of time she could reliably retrieve was 'half past freckle'- Billy's eyelids seemed to want to droop closed, and he could barely get through a sentence without yawning.

"You should get some sleep," Penny said. Ruffling his hair, she stifled a yawn of her own.

He shook his head. "Don't wanna," he replied, sounding like a little kid. For a split second, he looked scared.

"Nightmares?"

Billy faked a laugh, his eyes flickering away from her. "Dreams about you bleeding to death right in front of me? Why would I have those?"

"…that was a suspiciously specific denial." she said, giving him a hug. "Go to sleep, okay? I won't go anywhere."

"Promise?" he murmured, clearly exhausted.

"Yeah. Not gonna die."

Nodding sleepily, he leaned against her. After a few minutes, his eyes closed, and Penny allowed herself to fall asleep as well.

When the coin wash opened, they had just woken up. Billy rested his head on Penny's shoulder, the hopelessness slowly dissolving from his expression under her compassionate gaze.


	11. Epilogue

They had to wait a little while before they could turn any of their plans into realities.

The next day, Penny convinced Billy to get the cut on his arm checked out via offers of strawberry ice cream and skillful deployment of eyelashes.

Apparently, he had massive, untreated internal injuries from a multiple-year history of getting cars thrown at his head, being smashed up against walls, tossed off bridges and out of buildings and windows, receiving superpowered punches, et cetera.

"Think of it this way," Penny said brightly, leaning against the gurney. "It's not a setback, just… a thing that'll give us some time to plan our next move. There's no way the ELE would think of looking for you here."

"It's a setback."

"A mandatory waiting period? You have to wait this many days before you can attempt to solve L.A.'s problems?"

"…a minor setback."

They gave him her old room, and he grinned every time he found the little notes and doodles she left for the next occupant- under the bed, on the windowsill, inside the pillowcase. They were more than friends, but a bit less than anything else; not caring about the definition, she texted him between shifts.

("Moist, I need you to cover for me."

"Will it be dangerous?"

Shifty eyes. "Nope."

Moist saw through the lie in an instant; however, wanting his friend to be happy, he played along.)

Via cellphone, he convinced the ELE that he would take over Australia.

"Did it work?" Penny asks. She wore a floral-print dress, and her eyes seemed as bright as the day outside.

He grinned. "I think so."

They shared a high-five on the third try.

After a few weeks, he started tinkering with inventions again.

A pair of heels that didn't give people blisters (Penny, at five-foot-short, refused to wear flats.)

A heated jacket that, despite its thin fabric, provided body-temperature warmth on the coldest of days (the shelter's employees did this thing where, during the winter, they go out and deliver food and clothes to the homeless, and the idea of Penny shivering just made him uncomfortable.)

Okay, a supervillain wouldn't invent things just to make his laundry buddy happy. So… what was he?

What with learning how to use her new powers and keeping the new, larger shelter running smoothly, Penny couldn't remember ever being so busy. Nevertheless, she still found time to visit her friend. She brought Chinese takeout, Ethiopian mishmoshes of tomato-lentil paste and pitas that they ate with their hands, enormous banana spilts with chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. They debated over crossword puzzles and, on one weekend that Penny had been forced to take off- apparently 'normal girl by day, superhero by night' only works if you don't pull too many consecutive all-nighters- listened to most of The Hobbit in audiobook form.

Moist mailed soggy postcards from Australia, Hourglass left answering-machine warnings about how many days he had before the ELE uncovered the ruse (the total: not many at all,) and Billy had never been so happy in his life.

"What are we going to do?" Lucky Penny sat on the edge of his desk, flipping a coin. It came up heads nine times out of ten.

"Dunno." It felt good to be back in the lab with his gloves on, even if he had no idea how to resolve his problems. "We've got the ELE on one side of us, the HLH on the other, and they both hate our guts for making them look bad. If only we weren't so outnumbered, we could stand up to them." He wore the hood of his sweatshirt up whenever he was out in public; similarly, Penny had taken to wearing an enormous sunhat to and from work to hide her distinctive hair.

If only we weren't so outnumbered, Penny echoed silently. Frowning in thought, she turned the phrase over in her mind, examining it. Then she grinned. "I have an idea."

"Do tell."

She did.

When she finished, he looked at her, an almost manic energy suffusing his smile. "Penny? That's perfect."

You're perfect, the subtext conveyed. Inside her head, a little mini-Penny did cartwheels and flips.

There was a new post up on 's video blog. This time, the goggled mad scientist shared the screen with a sunny-looking redhead in a lavender dress, her face familiar to anyone who read the 'Superheroes' section of the L.A. times.

"Hi, so… umm, yeah. " waved at the camera, a little awkwardly. "I lost interest in this blog for a few months, but I have an important message which is important and stuff. This is my laundry buddy, Penny. And, yes, she does know I exist. We've recently started spending time with each other in non-fabric-softener-related contexts."

Penny's mouth quirked as if trying to hold back a full-sized grin. She picked up where he'd left off: "While that's important, it's not the purpose of our announcement-" and nodded at him to continue.

Billy cleared his throat. "Are you tired of trying to fit in with the strict immoral codes of the Evil League of Evil?"

Penny leaned in. "Fed up with the publicity-obsessed jerks in the HLH?"

"Then…"

At that, Penny sureptitiously kicked the CD player beneath the desk, and a hum-along-to-able piano melody kicked in. (This was, after all, a singalong blog.)

She began: "Call us good-"

"Call us bad-"

"We just do-"

"What we can," they sang, finishing the line together.

"Use our brains, fix the town-"

"Status quo, turn it round!"

He put an arm around her in a way that suggested easy familiarity; the way she leaned into him, however, conveyed much more than that.

"Forming the League of Chaotic Good," the two continued in unison.

"We won't tell you what you should or shouldn't do, cause we

Just want to fix society!

If you think

We'll prevail

Send an app

Through the mail

And we'll work to fix the world-"

In the last seconds of the video, before Doctor Horrible flails at the webcam, covering it with his hand, then hitting half the keyboard before he manages to find ALT+F4- well, it was a source of near-infinite fan debate, arguing over blurry screencaps in message-board flame wars, but the blog's more shipping-inclined fangirls insist that, right before the video cut out, Doctor Horrible pulled Lucky Penny into an adorkably passionate kiss. They bumped noses on the first attempt, but the second went perfectly.

The first application came five minutes later. It was from Hourglass- apparently, she'd known that they were going to form a league of their own "three weeks in advance." (She also included a note for Penny- "He likes being handcuffed. Oh, and wear something slinky." Penny snorted, trying not to crack up, and tucked the note into her pocket. She'd have to investigate that at some point.)

The slightly damp envelope with 'From Moist' scribbled on it in smudged, cheap ink went in the Accepted pile, no questions asked.

And then Johnny Snow, the corners of his application brittle with delicate frost- "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," he added as a postscript.

Conflict Diamond sent in an application on designer stationery, her handwriting erratic and angular. Switch wrote in round bubble letters, even dotting her I's with hearts.

And then they went viral.

A third of the Henchman's League defected to the League of Chaotic Good, and nearly a fourth of the Sidekicks' Union volunteered to donate their services.

Yeah, they were still outnumbered. Yeah, the chances of having cars flung at their heads increased exponentially every time someone clicked on Lucky Penny and 's Singalong Blog. And, yeah, Captain Hammer had returned to L.A.

Nevertheless, they had a chance.

And they worked well together. The same unshakeable idealism, the same quirkiness, the same unique love of unflavored frozen yogurt. Together, they planned on changing the world.

Or maybe ruling it. But probably just changing it. And kind of ruling it, but not exactly. Just in a metaphorical way.

Billy was more than fine with that.


End file.
